Adding a Library to Substance 3D Painter

[defaultn6aivtdareox]

I'm looking to add a custom library to Substance 3D Painter.  The library lives in a specific location on the C drive where it is managed by source control.  The old Painter used to be able to accomodate adding a registry key for the location and it could be set up programatically.  When looking for a new solution, I found this page:
https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/spdoc/adding-content-on-the-hard-drive-151584815.html
which links to this page:

https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/spdoc/adding-a-new-library-217187077.html

which I don't have access to.

What can I do here?

[defaultn6aivtdareox]

Nevermind. I found that it worked the same way as Substance Painter.  The Shelf entry just hadn't been created yet.

For referenence, the regestry key in question is "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Adobe Substance 3D Painter\Shelf\pathInfos"

[Lloyd5D2E]

Okay, but I'm using Macos and this doesn't help me.

Is there a way to do it on Macos?

[Léna Piquet - Froyok · Accepted solution]

If you want to add a libary location without passing by the application, see: https://substance3d.adobe.com/documentation/spdoc/editing-resource-paths-manually-172824761.html

Otherwise you can add a path via the UI like this:

1. Open Substance 3D Painter without opening a project.
2. Go to Edit > Settings > Libraries.
3. Click on ... next to Path field and navigate to the desired location.
4. Enter a new name for your library (note that spaces and special characters are not supported and will be converted to underscores).
5. Click the + button. 
6. Your library should appear in the list. 
7. Optional: if you would like your new library to be the default import location, select the Default button. 

I'm going to look into why the page mentionned requires a login.

[Lloyd5D2E]

Thank you for the instructions. Even this is far from stellar.

I would suggest a different approach to the UI, on that is more flexible and more in keeping with how people work:

1. The user library currently selected is the one that items will be created in. For example, if I create a Smart Material, it will be created in MyNewLibrary instead of the default one. This allows me to avoid dropping into Finder to move things to the correct location.

2. Make Default in Preferences a button with the following logic:

• No button in preferences, new items go into the selected library in the main GUI (new functionality)
• One button selected (default) new items ALWAYS goes in that library irrespective of the selected library in the GUI (current functionality)
• The preferences default is NO default button is on

This changes the logic slightly, but is more intuitive. It is either your_assests library OR the library current selected in Assets OR if the default button is on, the default in the Preferences (most people will not use this if they have the above ability)

Now when I make Smart Material they will appear in the library I want without fiddling with the Preferences (sub-libraries would also be nice, but baby-steps!)

Again, thanks for the instructions!

[Léna Piquet - Froyok]

Thank you for your feedback ! 🙂

Unfortuntely, what you describe won't work with everything. This "default" setting has impacts beyond the UI, it applies to our scripting API too.

As well, the Assets panel can be in a context where there is no explicit libray selected, in which case you can't know where to put newly created presets.

This is why we centralized it in the preferences.